The seven
astronauts set to rocket spaceward aboard NASA’s shuttle Endeavour next week
are a varied crew of experienced veterans and first-time flyers.

Commanded
by three-time spaceflyer Dominic Gorie, Endeavour’s STS-123 crew is gearing up
for a predawn launch toward the International Space Station (ISS) on March 11
to deliver a new Japanese storage room and Canadian robot to the orbiting
laboratory. There are four rookies on the flight, though Gorie and two veteran
spaceflyers have seven spaceflights under their collective belt.

“I would say it’s like a winning athletic team,” Gorie said. “They mix together
well, they know their roles and we win.”

Endeavour’s
astronauts will set a new record for the longest construction mission ever
launched to the ISS during their planned
16-day spaceflight. No less than five spacewalks are scheduled to install
the first module of Japan’s massive Kibo station lab, deliver Canada’s
two-armed maintenance robot Dextre and test a shuttle heat shield repair method
among other tasks.

Gorie said
his crew is up to the challenge of what promises to be an exciting, yet busy, two
weeks at the ISS.

“I’m really
looking forward to working with these guys for a great bunch of days,” Gorie
said.

Here’s a
brief look at Endeavour’s seven-astronaut crew:

The
commander

Hailing
from Lake Charles, La., Gorie is a retired U.S. Navy captain who was selected
for NASA’s astronaut corps in 1994 and first launched into space aboard the
shuttle Discovery in 1998. He is making his fourth spaceflight on STS-123.

But the
goals of his upcoming fourth spaceflight aim even higher, he said.

“The
complexity…is unprecedented,” Gorie, 50, said of the upcoming mission. “I
haven’t seen anything like this before and haven’t been part of anything like it,
for sure.”

With
STS-123, Gorie will make his third consecutive launch aboard the space shuttle
Endeavour.

“If I could
pick a shuttle, it would have to be Endeavour,” Gorie said, lauding the work of
shuttle workers at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. “It’s a great space
ship and I’ve never had any issue with it. It would be my shuttle of choice.”

A seasoned
Navy aviator and test pilot, Gorie flew 38 combat missions in Operation Desert
Storm in the early 1990s. He and wife, Wendy Lu, have a daughter, 18, and a
son, 20.

The
pilot

Riding in
Endeavour’s pilot seat on launch day will be U.S. Air Force Col. Gregory H.
Johnson, a first-time flyer who happens to be one of two Greg Johnsons in
NASA’s astronaut corps.

“It’s been
funny. I’ve gotten his boarding pass before and he’s gotten my hotel
reservation,” Johnson said of himself and fellow shuttle pilot Gregory C.
Johnson, who happened to be in the same astronaut class when they joined NASA
in 1998. “He gets my e-mails, I get his. That’s part of life.”

Johnson,
45, goes by the call sign “Box” and remembers watching Apollo astronaut Neil
Armstrong walk on the moon from his grandparents’ home in Cairo, Mich. He
joined NASA’s astronaut ranks in 1998 and participated in the agency’s
investigation into the 2003 Columbia tragedy.

“I don’t
think we forget risk anymore, or at least it’s certainly in the forefront of
our minds,” said Johnson, adding that there will always be risks to shuttle
flights. “Everything that has value has some risk, but I think that we’re
really confident that we’ve uncovered most of the hazards and have controls for
them.”

Johnson is
a veteran F-15E Eagle fighter pilot and flew 61 combat missions during two
deployments to Saudi Arabia in the early 1990s. He and his wife, Cari, have one
daughter, 10, and two sons, ages 13 and 14.

Spacewalking
chief

A
veterinarian by training, Endeavour’s lead spacewalker Rick Linnehan joined
NASA’s astronaut ranks in 1992 and performed life sciences experiments on his
first two spaceflights before making three spacewalks to service
the Hubble Space Telescope in 2002.

Growing up
in Lowell, Mass., Linnehan was raised by his parental grandparents Henry and
Mae Linnehan, whom he credited with setting him on a path to space.

“They
instilled in me a really good work ethic. They were really old-fashioned,” said
Linnehan, 50, who will participate in three STS-123 spacewalks. “Probably if it
hadn’t been for them, I wouldn’t be where I am today.”

As a child,
he hoped to be a pilot, astronaut or veterinarian, but it was while attending
veterinary school that he applied to NASA’s spaceflying ranks.

“I started
looking and they had doctors and they had geologists and physicists so I’m
like, ‘Well, you know, they need a veterinarian because, you know, why not?’” Linnehan said.

Despite his
surgical work to service Hubble, Linnehan finds the tricky assembly of Canada’s
large Dextre robot as a more daunting task.

“We’re
building this giant robot...it looks like some kind of old 1950s or ‘60s sci-fi
movie,” said Linnehan, who likened Dextre to the cartoon ‘Gigantor, the Space
Age Robot’ from his youth. “It’s pretty wild.”

Japan’s
orbital deliveryman

Japanese
astronaut Takao Doi, 53, is a mission specialist representing the Japan
Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) aboard Endeavour and will personally
deliver his country’s first habitable module to the ISS. He is making his
second spaceflight.

“I’m very
proud to be part of this team and part of this mission,” Doi said.

[Click here
for a full profile of Doi and JAXA’s Kibo storage module.]

Station’s
strong-“arm” man

Spacewalker-to-be
Robert Behnken, 37, is NASA’s youngest male astronaut making his first
spaceflight on Endeavour’s mission. He will participate in three of the
mission’s five spacewalks as well as wield the station’s robotic arm during the
flight.

“I thought
I would be more nervous about the flight,” said Behnken, a U.S. Air Force major
with a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering, in a NASA interview as he thanked his
instructors. “But the biggest feeling I have is just that sense of all the
things that we need to pack into our heads.”

A native of
St. Ann, Mo., Behnken said he is looking forward to spotting his hometown from
space, as well as hunting for the many astronaut training sites located in the
ISS partner nations.

Behnken is
engaged to be married, and logged over 1,000 flight hours in more than 25
different aircraft types as a USAF flight test engineer.

Spacewalker
debut

U.S. Navy
Capt. Mike Foreman, 50, will also shed his rookie astronaut status when he
launches aboard Endeavour. He is set to perform three of the flight’s five
spacewalks and will help assemble the Dextre robot.

“That’ll be
a success if we get that thing together,” Foreman, a native of Wadsworth, Ohio,
said of the many-piece automaton. “It reminds be of being a dad on Christmas
Eve, you know, opening up the presents and putting them together for your son
or daughter and wondering what you got yourself into.”

He applied eight
times to be a Navy test pilot, then seven more times to join the astronaut
corps before he was selected in 1998.

“I was
eight when I decided to be an astronaut, about 41 when I finally got selected
and now I’m 50 and going on my first mission,” Foreman said. “Keep the target
in front of you.”

A veteran
Navy aviator, Foreman served as the technical lead for NASA’s advanced orbiter
cockpit project and logged more than 5,000 hours in over 50 different aircraft.
He and his wife, Lorrie, have two sons, ages 23 and 19, and a daughter, 15.

Station’s
newest tenant

Rounding
out Endeavour’s crew is first-time flyer Garrett Reisman, who is taking a
one-way trip to the space station to join the orbiting
laboratory’s Expedition 16 crew. He will relieve French astronaut Leopold
Eyharts aboard the station and perform one of the STS-123 spacewalks.

“For me, it’s
kind of like playing the Super Bowl and then going about with the regular
season for the next couple of months,” said Reisman, 40. “It’s just been a
wonderful experience.”

Hailing
from Parsippany, N.J., Reisman is a mechanical engineer and joined NASA’s
spaceflying ranks in 1998. He will spend about two months on the ISS and join the outpost’s incoming Expedition 17 crew in April before returning aboard
NASA’s shuttle Discovery in early June.

Tucked
among his belongings aboard Endeavour will be a personal token of a childhood
friend who died during the World Trade Center attacks in New York City on Sept.
11, 2001, Reisman said.

“I
contacted his family, who I haven’t spoken to in decades … and they gave me a
personal effect of his that I could take along as a remembrance,” he added.

Reisman
said he, his wife, Simone, and their cat Fuzzy are looking forward to his
coming spaceflight. His wife, he added, is an oceanographer, avid diver and a
private pilot.

“She would
be strapping herself into the space shuttle right next to be given half a
chance,” said Reisman. “So she understands what this is all about and she’s very
excited about it too.”

Tariq joined Purch's Space.com team in 2001 as a staff writer, and later editor, covering human spaceflight, exploration and space science. He became Space.com's Managing Editor in 2009. Before joining Space.com, Tariq was a staff reporter for The Los Angeles Times. He is also an Eagle Scout (yes, he has the Space Exploration merit badge) and went to Space Camp four times as a kid and a fifth time as an adult. He has journalism degrees from the University of Southern California and New York University. To see his latest project, you can follow Tariq on Google+, Twitter and on Facebook.